Danika narrowed her eyes at Justin's avatar on her screen. She didn't like the feeling that he might have double crossed them, but at the same time she kind of respected that he'd had yet another backup plan for his party. She could see why Quin and Terri stuck with him despite his often cool to outright grumpy seeming personality. He looked after his people.

She cast her invisibility and zipped back across the border to report to her own party. Aishin jumped when she smacked invisibly into his chest instead of landing on his shoulder, but he still managed to catch her. "Sorry, I guess I need to practice more on my phone," she apologized quickly. 

"Not unless you're not coming back next week," Aishin replied. 

"I'll come back," she said quickly, thinking of how much she missed her comfortable living space. "Everything seems to be going ok on their side too. Apparently those white flowers Justin gave us to mark the line with are supposed to be a sign of where the first slime passed," Danika explained.

-- 

There were various small details that the skirmishers felt must be completed, but eventually they returned to the Kingdom's capital and collected their reward, the pelt of the mountain guardian's mate.

Only Danika remembered that mountain guardian was probably not the right title if she was the guardian of the mysterious Western Vault. She suddenly wondered how much her new job was going to impact her ability to play 'Living Jade Empire'. Working with a game you enjoyed sounded like a dream job, especially if she actually got to help build things in it and not just support it, but what if that made her unable to participate in it as much?

Everyone hugged Kit before she left. It was her first time hugging MatchlessMinion and she exclaimed, "How are you so plushy? I have never felt anything as plushy as you in my whole life!?"

MatchlessMinion just winked at her and said, "And now you'll have to return so you can experience the fluff again. No one can resist the fluff." 

Danika and Shrubbery giggled. 

Kit hugged him again and agreed, "I'm definitely going to return. Even if I can't really afford it, I'm going to visit an internet cafe or something on the day the guild is supposed to be created too. So I'll update you guys on how it's going then, ok?"

"Okay!" they chorused.

When she was gone there was a long moment of silence between them, as though none of them quite knew what to say, or what they should work on next. SaltySiamese's Siamese cat stalked up and dropped a message, gave them each a glare, and stalked off. Danika laughed as MatchlessMinion opened it.

"She wants to know if we succeeded, and says that they did. They've finally acquired the goblin relic they've been chasing for so long. And guess what it does?" MatchlessMinion reported laughingly. 

"I guess it doesn't let her turn into a cat like she hoped?" Shrubbery replied.

"Turns her into a sphinx," Danika suggested the half cat form that SaltySiamese had found creepy.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Close!" MatchlessMinion exclaimed laughingly. He looked at Aishin inquiringly, but Aishin just shrugged. MatchlessMinion announced, "It's the opposite of a sphinx, it gives her a cat head like that Egyptian goddess Bast. It's basically a fancy illusion mask." He laughed.

"Think she'll go ahead and return it to the goblins then?" Danika asked curiously.

"I don't know, I'll ask later," he replied as his grey cat carried away his reply to his sister. 

"Should we go return this pelt tonight?" Aishin asked. 

"I don't want to quit, but I should probably go do more homework instead," Shrubbery admitted. 

"I thought you already copied everything?" MatchlessMinion protested.  

Shrubbery's avatar shot him a funny sideways glance and then stuck out its tongue. Danika giggled and wondered if Shrubbery really had stuck her tongue out at him.

Shrubbery said, "You know I can't copy Salty's essays, not only are they usually horrible, but no one could forget reading them." 

"I guess so," he agreed.

"But I don't mind if you go without me, I'd be really slow moving up in the snow anyway," she added quickly.

"How's Eyes On The Sky doing?" Aishin asked.

"She's a thousand times more comfortable," Shrubbery exclaimed. Aishin laughed and she insisted, "I'm not exaggerating as much as you think I am. She doesn't have to be moved around as much, and spends most of the day resting in the pod, even if she's not playing all that time. She discovered this program that's a virtual theatre for old movies that she's been using a lot too. Then she spends the evening when my dad gets home from work sitting up and talking a lot more than she'd been able to. They're both a lot happier. Even if it's just another way to delay things a little, it's great."

Aishin held up his hands and said laughingly, "I believe you. I'm glad it's helping."

"I'm sorry you have to deal with that cumbersome system we were using," Shrubbery said a little guiltily.

"I bet it's not half as troublesome for me as it was for you guys," Aishin said with a grin. "I don't have any mobility issues, and I think it's freaking cool."

-- 

Once Shrubbery was gone, MatchlessMinion eyed the pair of them and asked, "There's probably no Karma reward or anything for making the delivery is there? You're just getting more animal hairs right?" 

Danika replied "I think there probably will be a reward, this quest is a subquest, but has its own line in my quest log, but you'll still get that as long as you're in the party if you don't want to come along?" She frowned and added, "I wonder if Lin Hao fixed her already, it'll be kind of a shame if he has."

"What do you mean?" Aishin asked. 

While MatchlessMinion asked, "What was broken?"

Danika explained while they traveled. Aishin carried her so that she didn't have to focus on flying. He'd already heard a lot of her speculations about the mountain guardian, which she decided to keep calling the big guardian saber toothed snow leopard. But she also explained about how Lin Hao and Devon Yu had said that calling players visitors had been part of an older dialogue library and that the cat wasn't supposed to have been active unless there were players around, and that they didn't know why she had a cub.

MatchlessMinion's eyes literally sparkled on his mobile avatar as he said, "Cool! I hope it's not fixed yet when we get there. I want to hear her talk about us like we're aliens!" 

Danika laughed and questioned, "Isn't it more like we're visiting demi-gods of legend than aliens?"

MatchlessMinion waved his little hands dismissively and said, "You obviously haven't read much about alien theory. Almost every god and monster ever recorded has been attributed to alien visitation at some point."

Aishin pointed out, "If you look at it another way, we are totally aliens visiting this world with artificially constructed bodies." 

Danika laughed, she couldn't resist their arguments, and added one of her own, "I'm even currently running around the world and taking samples from a thousand different species!"